Category: News Update
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One victim was robbed by three teenagers brandishing a box cutter under the Rockaway Freeway on Saturday evening. The other was robbed on Beach 90 Street and Holland Avenue early on Monday morning.

Police say that there were two robberies within 12 hours of each other on Beach 90 Street late last week and early this week.

In the first incident, a victim walking under Rockaway Freeway at Beach 90 Street was attacked and robbed by three male teens on Saturday night, police say.

The unidentified victim was approached by the teens, described by police as black males approximately 15 to 17 years of age at about 5:24 p.m. on May 25. One of the three brandished a knife and took money and other personal items from the victim. While police would not comment on the age or gender of the victim, posts on social media say the victim was a 13-year-old boy who was punched and then

The teens fled northbound on Beach 90 Street, police officials say.

A level one mobilization was called, bringing dozens of cops from the Strategic Response Group from all over south Queens. A wide search brought a negative response, police say.

In the second incident, which occurred at 5 a.m. on Monday morning, one of three black male teenagers who confronted the victim came up behind the unidentified victim and forcibly removed his property. The victim was uninjured.

Detectives from the 100 Squad are investigating both crimes, which may be related, according to police sources.

Local police urge pedestrians to always be aware of their surroundings, which can decrease their chances of becoming a victim.

Five-year-old Essiah Love Miller is all smiles after being returned to her mother. Day care center owner Trimeka Crumb was arraigned for abandoning child in front of her home.

A daycare worker who allegedly dropped five-year-old Essiah Love Miller off on the street in front of her residence earlier this week has been charged with child endangerment for abandoning the little girl, who was found a tenth of a mile away in a supermarket asking for food.

District Attorney Richard Brown said at her arraignment, “This defendant failed to complete the daily job she was paid to perform and in the process endangered the life of an innocent young girl who was left all alone on the street to fend for herself. Luckily this child was unharmed.”

Brown identified the defendant as Trimeka V. Crum, 35, of Mott Avenue in Far Rockaway. Crum was arraigned Thursday night in Queens Criminal Court on a criminal complaint charging her with endangering the welfare of a child.

Crum, who faces up to a year in jail if convicted, was released on her own recognizance and a full order of protection was issued, forbidding the defendant from having any contact with the child and ordered to return to court on May 8.

According to the criminal charges, the five-year-old victim’s mother had an arrangement with Crum, a day care provider to whom she had been sending her daughter to since approximately November 2016, that required Crum when dropping off the child at the end of the day to either accompany the child upstairs to her apartment and transfer custody of the child to one of her older siblings or to call the mother or one of the siblings to come downstairs and accompany the child upstairs.

Crum admitted in sum and substance to detectives that she dropped the child off at the front door outside the building every day. Crum further allegedly admitted that she dropped the child off in front of the house sometime between 6:00 p.m. and 6:15 p.m. on Wednesday, March 8, 2017, that she saw the child walk into the building and that, after waiting for two minutes and the child did not come out, she left.

Shortly thereafter, police responded to a radio run for an unattended child at a supermarket approximately a tenth of a mile from the child’s home, which required the child to cross an avenue.

According to Daily News reporter Tina Moore, Miller went to the clerk and told him that she was hungry. The clerks gave her snacks, chips and ice cream.

“She stayed calm, she didn’t cry, and I think we were more nervous that she was,” one of the owners of Brother’s Supermarket told the News.

The police were called and the girl was taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital for evaluation.

Crum was first licensed to run a day care center in her apartment at 23-21 Mott Avenue in September of 2014, according to city records. In 2016, the center was issued six violations, all of which were reportedly corrected, city officials said.

The city has now reportedly suspended her day care license pending an investigation.

Rockaway resident arraigned on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon in connection with a homicide inside of 333 Beach 32 Street early on Sunday morning. This photo was shot by onrockaway.com in January of 2016, when a woman was shot and killed in the same building.

The Rockaway man who murdered his common-law wife and injured her mother in a vicious knife attack in Edgemere on Sunday morning was arraigned on Monday in Queens Criminal Court on charges ranging from second degree murder to criminal possession of a weapon.

On Monday afternoon, Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced that 51-year-old Jonnie Jones, 42, of Beach 32 Street was arraigned on charges of second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of fourth degree criminal possession of a weapon.

The defendant was held without bail and ordered to return to court on March 16.

District Attorney Brown said that, according to the charges, in the early morning hours of February 26, the defendant stabbed the victim, Monet Franklin, 51, with a knife, multiple times about the body which resulted in wounds to her left lung, heart, liver and right kidney thereby causing her death.

The defendant also allegedly stabbed the victim’s mother, Maria Franklin, 74, in the left hand causing severe lacerations. Police say that the elder Franklin was injured while attempting to protect her daughter from Jones’ deadly assault.

Jones was found by responding police outside the building, nearby the Beach 35 Street A-Train Station with bleeding cuts to his hand and an injured eye, police sources say.

Chanel Lewis, accused of the jogger murder in Howard Beach, spent four years at the Martin de Porres High School on Beach 110 Street, graduating in 2015. The school is slated for troubled teens, although staffers and the school and relatives say that he was a model student.

The Martin de Porres school, formerly the Stella Maris High School for girls, sits at Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach 110 Street. The school’s website says that it is for students who have had a troubled past in traditional high schools.

The 20-year-old man who allegedly killed Howard Beach resident Karina Vetrano, touching off a massive manhunt that was ended last week with a DNA hit, attended the Rockaway school for “troubled” teens from September 2011 to his graduation in August of 2015.

According to the school’s Website, students who attend the school “struggle with internal and external factors beyond their control that have contributed to a failure to thrive in school,”

In a statement released to the press, Dr. Edward Dana, the school’s executive director said that there is no disciplinary record against Lewis, “nor are there any reports that he made threatening statements against other students.”

According to the Daily News, however, on May 17, 2011 administrators at the High School for Medical Professions in Canarsie, a city public school, called police, reporting that Lewis got into an argument with a female student and later asked the dean, “What happens if I bring a knife to school?”

Police did not arrest Lewis at that time, but they did declare him an “emotionally disturbed person,” and sent him to Kings County Hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

According to the News report, Lewis repeated his hatred of women in a more recent encounter with police, but the threats again did not warrant his arrest.

“There was no victim, no complaint, so there was no crime,” a police source told the News reporter.

A staff member at the school told the News that she was stunned by the charges against Lewis.

“He was the perfect kid,” said speech and language pathologist Amanda Edison, who worked with Lewis in 2015.

Lewis’ sister said he was not a woman hater.

“We’re not killers,” Theresa Forbes told the News. “We’re church people. They set him up.”

Police officers began looking for the teen on Wednesday night after she was reported missing as of 9:30 a.m. on February 1 from her home at 22-98 Nameoke Street in Far Rockaway.

Police say that she was last seen leaving her residence. Espinal is described as 5’2″, 110 lbs., medium complexion, brown eyes, black hair, last seen wearing a gray jacket, beige pants, and a black sweater.

Anyone with information in regards to this missing is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS or for Spanish 1-888-57-PISTA (74782)

The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or texting their tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577.

December 20, 2016 / rockaway / Comments Off on Police now treating unconscious PS 253 student as a crime, possibly a bullying and assault case

Eight-year-old Daniel Martinez was found unconscious in a room at PS 253 in Far Rockaway. Parents charge that assault was mishandled by school, police were not notified until two days later when mom called detectives from hospital room.

PS 253 is a kindergarten to grade five school on Central Avenue in Far Rockaway.

Police detectives from the 101 Precinct have shifted their focus in the case of an 8-year-old special needs student who was found unconscious at PS 253 in Far Rockaway on December 14.

Originally, police sources said that they were treating the case as an “aided” – an accident rather than a crime.

Now, however, after speaking with the boy’s family and with others involved with the case, they are treating it as a possible case of bullying and assault.

The 8-year-old boy, identified by police as Daniel Martinez, suffered a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage at the school last week. He reportedly woke up from his drug-induced coma Monday and immediately expressed fears about returning to school.

“All he keeps saying is that he doesn’t want to go to school. He looks so afraid,” the family’s pastor Danilo Merida told the Daily News.

Martinez spent the last six days under powerful sedation after he was knocked unconscious during an incident police are now investigating for possible ties to bullying.

Daniel’s parents told the News on Monday they’re considering legal action. They believe school staffers are hiding information about the incident and failed to act quickly enough when Daniel first started vomiting blood.

“All the teachers know what happened, but they’re covering it up,” his mother, Sandra Martinez told a News reporter in an emotional phone interview from her son’s hospital bedside.

“The school said that it was an accident…it was not an accident,” the boy’s distraught dad Jose Martinez, 38, said at the family’s home.

The family later heard from a friend that another student had been transferred to PS 253 due to bullying behavior at his last school, and was suspected in this incident as well, Jonathan said.

An official incident report from the school said that Daniel hit his head at 10:55 a.m., but EMS wasn’t notified until 11:30 a.m.

“He was laying there for 20 minutes. He was unconscious but throwing up blood,” Jonathan told The News.

“A lot of friends were trying to help him, and the security just said, ‘No, he’s alright,’” Jonathan claimed.

A source with the Department of Education said Monday that “school staff followed protocol and EMS immediately responded.”

According to the incident report, the other student “ran into” Daniel “by accident, knocking him down.”

“Daniel was escorted to the nurse’s office,” the report said. “He started vomiting and sweating profusely and fell unconscious for approximately 20 minutes.”

When the report was first entered at 12:36 p.m. last Wednesday, it said Daniel was unconscious when EMS transported him to Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

It was updated later on to say that he had regained consciousness in the ambulance.

Detectives from the 101 Squad and the Special Victims Unit are reportedly involved in the investigation.

A man was arrested last week for the vicious attack on a woman in front of the Social Security building on Beach 113 Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard on July 17. He claims it was a sex for money incident that went bad.

Police say they have arrested the man wanted for the violent assault of a woman in front of the Social Security office at 113-06 Rockaway Beach Boulevard on July 17.

Court records identify him as Isiah Nelson, 24, of Rockaway. Nelson says that the incident was not a rape, but a sexual act for money that went bad. Court documents, however show his DNA in a rape kit that was taken from the victim shortly after she arrived at the hospital.

Nelson has been arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on charges of Assault in the second degree and Assault in the third degree. Second degree assault calls for intent to cause serious bodily injury while third degree assault calls for intent to cause bodily injury.

According to court records sworn to by Detective Philmore Angol of the Queens Special Victims Squad, the unidentified victim said that she was in a local bar with a male acquaintance and that the last thing she remembers that night was taking a drink from her companion and walking down Rockaway Beach Boulevard with him.

The next thing she remembers, she told Angol, was waking up in the hospital with bleeding in her brain, a fractured orbital socket, and swelling and bruising to her face and with three missing teeth.

Angol testified that a rape kit was taken at the time that the victim was admitted to Jamaica Hospital. The semen found in the rape kit was the same as the DNA profile for Nelson, which was in the data bank of the state’s Department of Criminal Justice Services.

Nelson said that he was drunk and high and with the victim when he “solicited her for oral sex.”

He said that he had only $17 in his pocket, so they walked to an ATM and then to an alleyway for the sex.

He told Angol that the victim put her hand in his pocket, as if to take his money, and he felt threatened, so he beat her up.

A man walking on Rockaway Beach Boulevard at about 4:30 a.m. on the morning of the incident saw a woman propped up against the wall in front of the Social Security Office, 113-06 Rockaway Beach Boulevard.

The man did not have a cell phone, and he flagged down a passing cabbie, who called the 911 emergency phone system.

Responding patrol officers from the 100 Precinct found the unidentified victim with lacerations to her face and her pants down over her ankles. Police sources say that she was semi-conscious and could not tell officers what had happened to her or who had accosted and raped her.

Angol said in court papers provided by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown that he had reviewed surveillance videos from the area and saw the victim and observed the victim staggering along the street with her leggings torn around her ankles and her shirt ripped to pieces.

September 5, 2016 / rockaway / Comments Off on Mayor’s edict closing ocean to surfers sets up battle between cops and boarders; ocean now off limits on Tuesday

Dozens of surfers hit the waves on Sunday at Beach 90 Street. The ocean was put off limits by the de Blasio administration for Tuesday early on Monday. Photo by Giovani Joel Pinto for onrockaway.com

Surfers left a message written on the sand for Mayor de Blasio — “One Term Mayor.”

On Monday morning, police and fire units search for a surfer who was reported to have gone into the water on Beach 74 Street and never came out. No surfers were found to have been in trouble. Photo by Doug Macleod.

Surfers head for the water for a quick ride before police asked them to leave. Photo by Doug Macleod.

Firefighters and police who responded to the call of a surfer in trouble on the boardwalk on Monday morning at Beach 74 Street. Photo by Doug Macleod.

When Mayor Bill de Blasio closed the ocean to swimmers, bathers and surfers on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in the wake of Tropical Storm Hermine, there were few in Rockaway who doubted that surfers would ignore the edict and take to the raging waves.

They were right and the mayor’s edict set up a skirmish between surfers, who see it as their right to hit the waves during times when the waves are running high and both parks enforcement agents and cops who are ordered to stop them from doing so.

On Sunday night, for example, police were called to Beach 85 Street and the oceanfront by PEP officers because “several surfers were refusing to comply with their orders to leave the water.”

Police did respond and eventually talked the surfers out of the water, but eyewitnesses said that many went right back in the water after the cops and PEP officers left the scene.

According to city records, at least four surfers were ticketed for refusing to get out of the water.

Dozens more just left the water and they went back later on.

One of them told the New York Post that the lure of the five to ten-foot waves was just too strong.

“We only get a couple of days a year for all the conditions to come together, it’s really disappointing,” Jay Harrison, a surfer and photographer from New Zealand told the Post. “I’m going to fight [the summons he received]. There’s nothing dangerous about these conditions.”

Harrison and others were hit with summonses that cost $80 for “Failing to comply with a closed beach rule.”

Some locals called the mayor’s edict “ridiculous,” arguing that surfers live to go out into the water during storm conditions and that few are ever injured.

“Surfers know what they are doing, their limitations,” one Rockaway surfer who asked not to be identified, said. “The water might be too dangerous for weekend swimmers, but we are well aware of what we have to do to keep ourselves safe. We don’t need the mayor to tell us what we can and can’t do in the water.”

“The mayor should mind his own business,” said a post on social media. “He knows nothing about surfers or surfing or he wouldn’t have closed the beaches in the first place.”

Not all Rockaway residents agree.

“They make the first responders come and put their lives in danger,” on such person said of the surfers on social media. “They put their own lives and the lives of others in danger just to ride the waves for a few seconds. That does not make any sense. The first responders should just leave them if they get in trouble. It’s their own fault.”

Finbar Devine, posting on Facebook, said, “Surfing and skateboarding are literally the only two sports (aside from shooting) that you assume automatic risk the second you pick up the board. Almost any (there is always one idiot someplace) surfer trying to get in the water in this kind of weather has a full and total understanding of what they are getting into and is making an informed decision about doing so, it’s not like these are some random urbanite that’s only been to the beach once before when they were little and thinks it’s an okay idea to go in only up to their knees.”

On Monday morning, with the beaches still closed to surfers, there was a report of a surfer in trouble at Beach 74 Street, bringing a massive response from police, fire and parks workers. While there were dozens of surfers in the water, none was found to be in difficulty.

Shortly after that incident, swimming, bathing and surfing were put off limits on Tuesday as well.

Hermine will move back towards the coastline on Sunday night and Monday, bringing more rain and heavy winds, perhaps coastal flooding.

Don’t go near the water again on Monday. The city has once again closed all of the Rockaway beaches to swimming, bathing and surfing, although many surfers took their chances to brave the high surf on Sunday.

New York City beaches will be closed to swimming, bathing and surfing on Monday, September 5 due to dangerous rip currents, an official with the Parks Department said early on Sunday afternoon.

The beaches were similarly closed on Saturday and Sunday as the storm approached the metropolitan area, but the restriction had little impact on surfers, who hit the raging waves early and often with little restriction.

Weather experts from the National Weather Service updated their reports on Hermine early on Sunday afternoon.

That agency said that Hermine will slow and turn toward the north then northwest later Sunday into Monday, while becoming stronger. Rain and gusty winds will push back onto more of the mid-Atlantic coast Sunday night and into Labor Day.

The New Jersey coast and the Atlantic Ocean beaches of southern Delaware are expected to endure the strongest winds of Hermine, with gusts exceeding 60 mph.

Hermine is expected to stall offshore of the Delmarva Peninsula and New Jersey into at least Tuesday.

The result will be adverse conditions for days regardless of its official classification of a tropical versus non-tropical storm. At its nearest point to the U.S., the center of Hermine will be within 150 miles of the New Jersey coast early this week.

While the storm has officially lost tropical characteristics, it will maintain tropical storm strength and act like a slow-moving, powerful nor’easter. Winds offshore are expected to reach hurricane force from Sunday evening to Tuesday.

How close to the coast Hermine tracks and where the storm stalls from Sunday onward will determine the severity and location of flooding and damaging winds. Even a small shift in the track can have a big difference on impacts.

Latest indications are the strongest winds and heaviest rain of Hermine will stay offshore much of Sunday. Coastal areas of the mid-Atlantic should still brace for extremely rough surf, coastal flooding, strong winds and locally heavy rain Sunday night through Monday night.

In southern New England and across Long Island, the worst of the storm with rain, strong winds, high surf and coastal flooding will be late Sunday night and Monday.

City officials have responded to the storm.

As a precaution, the Parks Department will be installing flood barriers at the ends of beach blocks from Beach 127 Street to Riis Park, where there is no protection from the boardwalk, tonight at 6 p.m. They are asking that everybody on those beaches be off by 7 p.m. for their own safety.

Extra police and fire department resources have been deployed to the Rockaway area, again, in an abundance of caution, according to a report by City Councilman Eric Ulrich. The city has no plans to cancel public events and parades for the weekend.

“[Hermine] is expected to be a wind and storm surge event with very little accumulation of rain,” Ulrich said.

High tide on Monday is approximately 1 p.m. At that time, experts say, expect heavy winds, moderate rain and extra-large ocean swells, some as high as 15 feet high, as well as some coastal flooding.

High tide on Tuesday is at approximately 1 a.m. Wind will die down a bit, some rain, but high swells remain in play. Afternoon high tide on Tuesday is approximately 1:30 p.m. Clouds and some rain. If storm continues to hang around off the coast of New York and New Jersey, then high swells will continue.

Wednesday high tide is at approximately 2 a.m. Storm should be moving away to the northeast, but high swells should continue in its wake. By the 2:15 p.m. high tide on Wednesday, storm should be moving away at good clip, temperatures will climb and wind will drop.

By Thursday, temperatures will reach 90 degrees and all residue actions from the storm should be gone from the New York area.

On Wednesday, police released this surveillance photo of one of the men wanted for the laundromat robbery on Saturday

For the second time in less than a year, armed robbers hit the laundromat in the shopping center at Beach 32 Street and Beach Channel Drive early on Saturday morning.

Police say that an unidentified black male walked into Laundryland, located at 32-25 Beach Channel Drive at about 3:22 a.m. and pulled a gun on the workers at the all-night laundromat.

A level one mobilization was called by police, bringing cops from the Strategic Response Unit to Far Rockaway. They spread out and searched the neighboring area, including Bayswater Park, directly across the street from the strip mall.

On Wednesday, police sources released surveillance footage of the armed suspect, who along with another man, robbed the same laundromat twice.

The video shows one suspect who went inside the Laundry Land laundromat on Beach Channel Drive near Bay 32nd Street just after 3 a.m. on Saturday, police said. The suspect, with his face covered briefly, then pulls out a silver gun on a 53-year-old man.

Alone, the suspect demanded money from the victim and took $200, police said. He ran off in an unknown direction.

On July 28, two suspects first struck the Laundry Land establishment just after midnight, police said. They approached a 49-year-old woman with one of them holding a silver gun and demanding money.

The suspects took $320 before running off, cops said.

No one was hurt in either incident, police said.

The first suspect is described as black, about 6-foot, weighing 220 pounds with close cut short black hair, police said. He was last seen wearing gray shorts with a black belt, gray T-shirt and white sneakers.

The second suspect is described as black, police said. He was last seen wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, black pants and a black face-mask.